


The Damn Bagel Fic

by Feynite



Series: The Bagel AU [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bagel AU, F/M, Fluff, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, yes it's ridiculous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 19:32:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5103044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feynite/pseuds/Feynite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Any good bagel connoisseur can tell you that in the world of Thedosian baked goods, there are two major contenders for the title of Best Bagel out there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Damn Bagel Fic

**Author's Note:**

> Blame tumblr.

Any good bagel connoisseur can tell you that in the world of Thedosian baked goods, there are two major contenders for the title of Best Bagel out there.

Deciding a winner is a fight as old as deep dish versus thin crust – if not older – and there have been no real victors in the long, bloody battles waged over the matter. Some would say this is because taste is largely subjective, and certain people are just going to prefer certain qualities in their food without one being inherently  _better_  than the other. These people are cowards who haven’t eaten enough bagels yet.

Because everyone knows that it’s the Marcher style bagel that wins. Soft, chewy, a little buttery, perfect for spreading toppings onto; excellent when toasted. Light enough that you can actually eat one and not feel like you’ve swallowed half a cake. Clearly, the superior bagel.

But some bitter assholes simply cannot admit defeat, and that’s where the Orlesian bagel comes in.

Dense. Sweet. Basically like a compact donut. Deceptively small, so you might think they’re a lighter breakfast choice, but then you eat one and it stays with you the whole day. Boiled in honey-water, because the already sweet dough just wasn’t sweet enough without it, she guesses. Sprinkle some sugar on top and you’ve got dessert.

It’s a bagel for people who secretly hate bagels, in her estimation, and that should immediately disqualify it from the running.

She glares at the Orlesian bagel place opening across the street.

Across the street from  _her_  vastly superior Marcher bagel place.

Now, it should be made one hundred percent clear that she’s not worried. This is Kirkwall, after all, and not Hightown, either. There’s more than enough hungry people to float two bagel shops – heck, the last shop in that space was also a bagel shop, and it only closed because the owner retired – and even if there weren’t, they’re in the Free Marches. Where people like  _real_  bagels. Not fancy Orlesian stuff.

Except maybe as a novelty, but that’s where them not being in Hightown comes into play.

So she’s not worried.

But she is vaguely insulted, because  _what even?_  Who opens an Orlesian bagel shop in Kirkwall and why would they insult her by advertising that fact on a sign she has to see every day now? What sort of raving lunatic is running this place? She’s picturing maybe one of the fancy rich heiresses from Leliana’s magazines, the kind who always seem to pick the most idiotic ventures for their ‘start-up businesses’ and invariably try to turn them into reality television shows.

Madame Petite-Pompadour and her Bagel Babes, where people scream about their cheating boyfriends for an hour and nobody makes bagels.

She doesn’t want a reality television show on her street.

They have to block off roads for that and her foot traffic would take a sincere hit.

This merits investigation, she decides, after about an hour’s worth of glaring at the newly opened space. She’s been seeing that sign for days now while the interior’s been getting renovated, and it’s been gradually pissing her off more and more.

“Cassandra, hold down the fort,” she requests.

“Do  _not_  pick a fight with the Orlesians,” Cassandra asks. “Remember the patisserie!”

“Celene had it coming,” she replies, unapologetic, and then slips off her apron and out through the door.

It’s crowded, but then of course it’s crowded; it’s a new place. She scans the occupants, and spots only one familiar face – Josephine, near to the door.

They see each other at approximately the same time.

She levels a finger at the Antivan woman.

“Traitor,” she accuses.

“I would never!” Josephine declares, pressing a hand to her heart. “I am only here to examine the competition on  _your_  behalf!”

“What’s that in your filthy traitor hand, then?” she asks, pointing to the half-eaten Orlesian bagel.

Josephine turns to shield it with her body.

“I can hardly examine the competition without sampling their product, now can I?”

“Uh-huh.”

She folds her arms.

Josephine cracks.

“I am weak! It has been  _years_  since I have had a decent Orlesian bagel, and they are  _so good!”_

She narrows her eyes.

“You’re lucky you’re  _you_ ,” she decides. “Anyone else would no longer be my friend at this point.”

“I know,” Josephine agrees, and at least has the good grace to duck out of the shop before finishing her bagel.

Further observation of the interior, however, reveals a surprise.

It’s… nice.

Not like, fancy Orlesian nice. Like, ‘pleasantly clean and just a tiny bit elegant but ultimately pretty straightforward and comfortable’, nice. The menu board is very legible, with only a small selection of items, and the air smells good, even if it’s the deceptive scent of inadequate bagels.

Then she gets a look at the proprietor.

Oh.

…Oh.

Well, he’s definitely not a wealthy Orlesian heiress.

She blinks, and wonders if he’s maybe been hired by one, or something. He’s not what she would consider to be the typical definition of an attractive elven man. Not like, say, Fenris – floppy haired beguiler of women he doesn’t know are looking at him. For starters, this guy is bald. And tall. With a long face and what she suspects are quite broad shoulders, buried underneath a forest green sweater and a crisp, white apron.

There’s a little wolf on the apron.

She thinks it’s supposed to look cool, but it’s actually just sort of… cute.

Also, the man has some of the most elegant features she’s ever seen in her life. Sweeping eyelashes and a lupine jaw and beautiful cheekbones and  _freckles_ , oh help, he even has a  _dimpled chin._  So no, not typically handsome for an elf; atypically gorgeous by her own standards, though.

 _This is awkward,_  she decides, and before she can make any further assessments of the situation, flees.

~

“He is a  _solid ten,_  Cassandra,” she hisses, when the woman finally gives up pretending to disapprove of spying on the competition, and instead finally asks for details. Which she reluctantly gives up, in all of their embarrassing honesty.

It’s not a good idea to lie to Cassandra.

Varric’s the only person she’s seen attempt it and live to tell the tale.

“Truly?” Cassandra asks, skeptical.

“His eyes look like someone took pieces of the sky and dropped them into the most gorgeous face they could find, because nothing else would be worthy of finishing such a work of perfection,” she declares, morosely. “Why would the gods punish me by making him like  _Orlesian bagels?_  And not even just for eating; he actively produces them! And sells them! Across the street!”

Cassandra sighs.

There’s just a biiiit too much softness in that sigh, and not enough disgruntled disgust for her liking. She looks up from where she’d buried her face into her hands.

“What?” she asks.

“Nothing!”

“No, that was not nothing. That was a  _sigh,_ ” she insists. “Why are you sighing?”

“Well… it is a  _tiny_  bit romantic,” Cassandra admits, defensively. “Two rivals, love at first sight, a war that can never be won standing between them. Even if it is just about bagels, it is still very dramatic.”

“This isn’t love at first sight,” she refutes. “It’s the lamentation of the waste of a perfectly good physical form on someone who’s probably as vacuous as the furthest reaches of space. And the bagel wars are serious, Cassandra! People have  _died!_ ”

Not over the actual bagels, but still. They have, and the bagel wars are serious.

She stands by her points.

“If you say so.”

Well, Cassandra’s Nevarran. She’s never really understood the commitment to the fight, or the ugly brutality that can spring up on both sides. Though she is, at least, loyally ensconced on the right team.

They’re going to have to bring down the Orlesian bagel place.

She and Hot Wrong Bagel Man are never going to see eye-to-eye, and that’s the sad truth.

~

Hot Wrong Bagel Man keeps coming in to her bagel shop.

At first she thinks he’s doing what she did, and scoping out the competition. But if that’s the case, then he’s doing a pretty extensive job of it, because he keeps on coming back.

Coming back and scowling at their menu board, like it’s personally offended him. He scowls at it while she looks at him, and, admittedly, kind of enjoys the view, in the midst of internally debating whether or not to just ask him why he keeps coming back. And why he likes  _Orlesian bagels,_  of all the fucking things, because when he opens his mouth to place his order,  _the song of angels_  drifts out and assaults her ears with its melodious beauty. (The way he says: “Hold the chives.” Like firelight in her heart, and also lower areas of the body.)

Not to mention that the view the counter was hiding the first time she saw him is just… just….

It’s torture, she decides. Torture. Some god figured she had it too good, and made him, this insanely attractive man, who is so Wrong About Bagels, just to spite her. And then that god gave him  _legs._

She’s going to blame the Dread Wolf. Seems like his style.

“Do you have any beverages that are not tea or coffee?” he asks her.

It prompts an eyebrow raise from her.

What’s he got against tea and coffee?

“Water, milk, and bubblegum milkshakes,” she tells him.

He pauses.

“Bubblegum milkshakes?”

She shrugs.

“We started making them in the summer, but people kept asking for them off-season, so now they’re year round,” she explains.

He pauses, seems to consider, and then orders one.

She wishes she could say it was the first bubblegum milkshake she ever made someone before nine a.m. on a weekday, but she lives in Kirkwall, and Varric’s got some weird friends, so sadly, it’s not even close.

Morning milkshakes do, in fact, become Hot Wrong Bagel Man’s consistent order, to the point where she finds herself wondering if he has some kind of thing with sugar. Like maybe he can’t not eat sweet food. Which isn’t an excuse, exactly, but might go some way towards explaining the Orlesian bagel thing. Maybe it’s some kind of weird curse, like he used to work for some fancy cake-obsessed noble woman who made all of her elves sugar junkies to keep them in line? That sounds like a thing that could have happened. Maybe that was a thing that happened!

His place also sells donuts. And Anderfellian strudels, which she finds out when she catches Anders and Dorian enthusing over them and sends them both long, hard looks until they stop.

Apparently it’s all delicious.

Which begs the question as to why Hot Wrong Bagel Man keeps coming into  _her_  shop to scowl at her menu board, when there’s an entire street full of restaurants, including his own, to choose from.

The bubblegum milkshakes aren’t  _that_  good.

“I would seriously kill a man for them, so you’re not giving yourself enough credit there,” Sera suggests, when she finally broaches the subject like a mature and reasonable adult faced with an utterly unfair dilemma at Wicked Grace night.

“I think he might actually be smart,” she says. “I have no idea how that’s possible, but I look into his unreasonably gorgeous eyes and I swear there’s almost a spark of intelligence in there.”

“Do you have to describe him like that  _every time?”_  Cullen asks her. He’s wearing about eight layers of clothing tonight, proving that even though he still hasn’t learned not to bet against Josephine, he’s at least learned to brace for the consequences.

“Like what?” she asks.

“Like – ‘gorgeous eyes’,” he says.

“Sinfully lyrical voice,” Josephine supplies.

“Face like it was hand-sculpted by the heavens,” Varric adds.

“Arse you could bounce a quarter off of,” Sera volunteers.

“Dick for miles,” Iron Bull throws in.

“I did not say that one,” she says, levelling a finger at him.

He snorts.

“Yeah, but we all know you were thinking it.”

Fair enough.

She glares at the tabletop, and then shrugs.

“Well it’s all true,” she decides.

“Look,” Bull says, as he throws another chip in the pile. “This is clearly a lust type situation, right? You can’t stand the guy, but he gets your motor running. So just go and get it out of your system. Take a week off of work, close down the shops, and you two can fire up your twin bagel ovens until you can’t walk and you never want to look at him again. Boom.”

“And then, Maker, stop  _mentioning_  it,” Cullen begs.

 _Okay,_  she thinks, nodding slightly.

Okay, that’s… maybe not a bad idea.

She’s never been much of a one-night-stand kind of a person, but there are exceptions to every rule. And it’s definitely a distraction to her quest to bring down his business, being all… distracted. And everything.

And it really is just a lust type thing. She’s pretty sure that if she ever spoke to him for more than five minutes, she’d discover  _exactly_  why he was the type of person to open an Orlesian bagel shop, and that would be that.

Heck, maybe talking to him would even just kill the attraction altogether. Problem solved before she even has to jump him.

Although she  _does_  want to jump him.

…Hmm.

~

The next day, after she hands Hot Wrong Bagel Man his breakfast milkshake, she works up her nerve, and decides to go for it.

“Would you like to go to dinner with me?” she asks him.

He stares.

Blinks.

Pauses, for a moment.

She hopes it’s surprise, and not that he’s actually this bad at formulating responses to fairly straight-forward questions.

“Yes,” he finally says. “I believe I would.”

She smiles.

It’s definitely not a big, dumb, ‘my-crush-just-said-yes’ type smile, because that would make her a dork. Or, like, a middle schooler.

“Fantastic!” she exclaims, which is maybe more enthusiasm than she meant to direct towards Hot Wrong Bagel Man and the potential of a one-night stand to get him out of her system.

He seems slightly taken aback as well, but screw it. If she’s going to be enthusiastic, then she’ll be enthusiastic. Whatever. It’s not embarrassing. She clears her throat, and he stands there for a moment, holding his milkshake and, she thinks, maybe actually colouring in the cheeks a little.

It’s really appealing.

She’s glad this thing is only about raw, animal attraction and not all mixed up in things like personality, or Cassandra’s stupid  _love at first sight_  theory.

Ha, ha.

Ha?

She clears her throat and gives him her name and number, and he beams a fantastically winning smile in her direction. If feels like her brain actually turns off for a solid three seconds.

His eyelashes flutter.  _Flutter._  She didn’t think eyelashes actually did that outside of cartoons or people with ridiculous eyelash extensions and allergies.

“I am called Solas, by the way,” he tells her.

“Thanks,” she replies, which is a completely valid response to being told someone’s name.

Shut up.

He clears his throat and finally takes his milkshake and goes on his merry way, which is good because she has a business to run, dammit. A business to run so well that it drives his straight into the ground.

She stares at his stupid Orlesian bagel sign through the window until she remembers why that’s important.

About an hour later, her phone rings.

“I was considering waiting the expected length of several days to set up a date, but then it occurred to me that I don’t actually want to,” the voice of angels informs her. “Is eight o’clock tonight alright for you?”

Well.

Well.

Well, the sooner it’s done with, she reasons.

“Sure,” she says. “I can meet you at the shop.”

“Perfect.”

When she hangs up, Cassandra is looking at her with  _that_  look on her face. The look on her face that says that her television is broken again, and it’s been six months since Varric’s last  _Swords & Shields _novel, and thus Cassandra’s biggest source of entertainment is watching her friends and colleagues stumble through their love lives which is  _fine_  when it’s Hawke who’s flailing off into the wind but now, apparently, she and Hot Wrong Bagel… Solas, are her new fixation, and that’s decidedly less fun.

“I’m just going to fuck him out of my system,” she says. “Bull suggested it.”

Cassandra snorts.

“That is  _not_  going to work.”

“It is absolutely going to work because anyone vapid enough to open an Orlesian bagel shop is obviously going to be defective in some key way, so as soon as I can stop wondering what his stupid beautiful mouth tastes like – because I will  _know_  what his stupid beautiful mouth tastes like – the allure will be gone,” she declares.

“You are going to marry an Orlesian bagel man,” Cassandra tells her. “I will be maid of honour, and I will laugh. Tastefully. Prior to the ceremony.”

She flips one of her dearest friends and allies the bird.

She absolutely  _does not_  start watching that clock at six thirty, either.

_This is not middle school._

No. Definitely not. They’ll barely eat, she’ll spring the whole ‘casual hook-up one time deal thing’ proposition on him; if he’s up for it, they’ll rock the sheets like springtime bunnies, and then she will triumphantly run him out of business and look back fondly on the whole thing as a great conquest or something, but also be nice to him when he has to sadly pack his bags and leave Kirkwall because she’s not a monster.

They spend an hour and a half sitting in the restaurant.

Talking.

And it’s not even about bagels.

Bagels don’t even come up  _once._

They go to the Hanged Man – because if things are going to head south, she has backup there – and he goes:

“Kirkwall’s architecture is fascinating.”

And she goes:

“Isn’t it? Did you know the university used to be a mage prison?”

Which is maybe not the greatest opening conversation for a date, but somehow this leads to them spending an hour and a half barely touching their food and talking about architecture and history and artwork, and he knows more than she’d expect from someone who’s clearly not a Marcher, and then he admits to being a mage and a history nerd (former’s a bit of a surprise, latter’s blatantly obvious) and she thinks about trying to steer the conversation towards the nitty gritty but then it’s just so _goddamn interesting._

They catch a movie.

It’s a period piece war drama that’s been out for a while, and they’re two of maybe five people in the theater. Dark. Quiet. The movie itself is a boring mess of inaccuracies and overwrought ‘dramatic’ sequences that would put her to sleep under most circumstances.

Perfect for making out.

They spend the entire time mocking the movie and she wants to lick the side of his mouth but it would also just be  _fantastic_  if he never stopped talking. They sit through the damn credits because he’s explaining about the actual battle that the movie was based on, and it’s about a thousand times more interesting than what made it into the film and not something she’s heard much about before, and she finds that she can’t stop asking him questions and he can’t seem to cut his answers short.

The usher has to kick them out.

The  _damn usher._

Because they are  _talking the night away._

_They walk back to her place so they can keep talking._

And then he stops at the stoop. Like a gentleman.

“I hope I have not bored you,” he says with a sheepish grin, as if he’s somehow just forgotten that they’ve been holding a non-stop stream of conversation since the Hanged Man.

“I think this is the best date I’ve ever been on,” she tells him.

He chuckles, as if he’s not entirely sure whether or not she’s joking, and she wants to say that she is but the horrifying reality of the situation is that it’s  _actually true_  and she freezes for a second because this is Hot Wrong Bagel Man and there is obviously still going to be some kind of fatal flaw lurking in the corners of his sexy-fascinating psyche, but damn if she can remember why she should care right now.

She kisses him.

It’s not even a ‘let’s get this one night stand ball rolling’ kiss, either. She leans up and brushes her lips to his, just softly, and then pulls back again. It’s hardly even a kiss, really, except it still makes her lips tingle and her pulse pick up the pace.

He smiles, and shakes his head a little, and then dives in and steals another one.

With tongue.

With very, very  _nice_  tongue.

 _Screw it,_  she thinks.

His stupid beautiful mouth, it turns out, tastes better than bagels anyway.


End file.
